Improvable objects and attached dialogue: new literacy practices employed by learners to build knowledge together in asynchronous settings

Asynchronous online dialogue offers advantages to learners, but has appeared to involve only limited use of new literacy practices. To investigate this, a multimodal approach was applied to asynchronous dialogue. The study analysed the online discussions of small groups of university students as they developed collaboratively authored documents. Sociocultural discourse analysis of the dialogue was combined with visual analysis of its structural elements. The groups were found to employ new literacies that supported the joint construction of knowledge. The documents on which they worked together functioned as ‘improvable objects’ and the development of these was associated with engagement in ‘attached dialogue’. By investigating a wider range of conference dialogue than has previously been explored, it was found that engaging in attached dialogue associated with collaborative authorship of improvable objects prompts groups of online learners to share knowledge, challenge ideas, justify opinions, evaluate evidence and consider options

Augmenting primary teaching and learning science through ICT

This study explored how information communication technologies (ICTs) in primary classrooms can enhance the teaching and learning of science. By building on teachers’ and students’ prior knowledge and experience with ICTs, we investigated how ICT use can structure activities to offer enhanced opportunities for active participation in science. The project generated examples of how ICTs can support subject-relevant ways of exploring and communicating science, and evaluating what has been learnt. The major implications from the key finding, found in the Summary report are that; ICTs amplify science learning if teachers unpack the scientific ideas to identify specific pedagogical strategies that exploit the opportunities of each ICT. Visually recorded data present instant, immediate and context-rich information that teachers and students can use as a repository for evaluation, analysis and communication. For ICT-supported activities to meet the needs of diverse learners, students and teachers need “sandpit” time to develop competencies to participate in various tasks. Teachers who use ICTs require support tailored to the specific pedagogical, content and technology needs of the topic they are teaching

The Construction of Shared Knowledge through Asynchronous Dialogue

This thesis investigates how groups of learners use asynchronous dialogue to build shared knowledge together over time. To do this, it takes a sociocultural approach, with a situated focus on learners' social and temporal settings as well as on the tools they employ. It utilises concepts developed to support understanding of knowledge co-construction in face- to-face environments, particularly the social modes of thinking identified by Mercer and his colleagues (Mercer, 1995, 2000, 2002; Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Mercer & Wegerif, 1999) and the improvable objects described by Wells (1999). Analysis shows that, over short periods of time, groups of learners construct shared vocabulary, history and understanding slowly through the use of a series of discursive devices including those identified here as 'constructive synthesis', the 'proposal pattern' and 'powerful synthesis'. Over longer periods they may engage in 'attached dialogue', a form of asynchronous dialogue that is mediated by improvable objects. The development of these improvable objects involves learners engaging in exploratory dialogue that builds into progressive discourse, a coordinated form of co-reasoning in language. While doing this, they actively work to avoid unproductive interaction by consistently shifting responsibility from the individual to the group. Previous studies have suggested that asynchronous dialogue may act to limit learners to cumulative exchanges (Littleton & Whitelock, 2005; Wegerif, 1998). The analysis over time presented here shows that asynchronous exchanges are enriched by the use of textual affordances that are not available in speech. In the case of attached dialogue, groups of learners are prompted to share knowledge, challenge ideas, justify opinions, evaluate evidence and consider options in a reasoned and equitable way. They do this more successfully when their co-construction of knowledge is not solely task-focused but also focuses on tool use and on the development of social knowledge about the group

Thinking, Interthinking, and Technological Tools

Language use is widely regarded as an important indicator of high quality learning and reasoning ability. Yet this masks an irony: language is fundamentally a social, collaborative tool, yet despite the widespread recognition of its importance in relation to learning, the role of dialogue is undervalued in learning contexts. In this chapter we argue that to see language as only a tool for individual thought presents a limited view of its transformative power. This power, we argue, lies in the ways in which dialogue is used to interthink – that is, to think together, to build knowledge co-constructively through our shared understanding. Technology can play an important role in resourcing thinking through the provision of information, and support to provide a space to think alone. It can moreover provide significant support for learners to build shared representations together, particularly through giving learners access to a wealth of ‘given’ inter-related texts which resource the co-construction of knowledge

Learning analytics to identify exploratory dialogue within synchronous text chat

While generic web analytics tend to focus on easily harvested quantitative data, Learning Analytics will often seek qualitative understanding of the context and meaning of this information. This is critical in the case of dialogue, which may be employed to share knowledge and jointly construct understandings, but which also involves many superficial exchanges. Previous studies have validated a particular pattern of “exploratory dialogue” in learning environments to signify sharing, challenge, evaluation and careful consideration by participants. This study investigates the use of sociocultural discourse analysis to analyse synchronous text chat during an online conference. Key words and phrases indicative of exploratory dialogue were identified in these exchanges, and peaks of exploratory dialogue were associated with periods set aside for discussion and keynote speakers. Fewer individuals posted at these times, but meaningful discussion outweighed trivial exchanges. If further analysis confirms the validity of these markers as learning analytics, they could be used by recommendation engines to support learners and teachers in locating dialogue exchanges where deeper learning appears to be taking place

Sociocultural understandings of technology-mediated educational practices: improvable objects and meaning-making trajectories in the ICT-literate classroom

Informed by sociocultural theory, this thesis addresses the gap between the view that teaching-and-learning should be an extended, integrated experience, and the limited research available on how classroom technologies can support this (Glover, et al., 2007). The research explores a new programme using technologies (including interactive whiteboards: IWBs) together with dance/movement and more traditional classroom activities to support teaching-and-learning. Data are presented from eight consecutive history lessons on the Great Fire of London with a Year 2 class (6-7 years), together with four interviews, two Video-Stimulated Reflective Dialogue sessions and a focus group. Findings are based on sociocultural discourse analysis (Mercer, 2004), multimodal analysis (Jewitt, 2009; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of these data. With implications for both theory and practice, analysis shows how the IWB was used in innovative ways to offer structure and flexibility across lessons. Evidence is also provided of how exploring the topic through dance/movement, images and other activities could support pupils in building conceptual understanding. This then served as a context to develop verbally-expressed understanding. Analysis indicates, however, that confusion could arise in the different ways concepts were referred to through this integrated approach. Based on these findings, Wells’ (1999) concept of the ‘improvable object’ is extended to illustrate how flexible use of IWB slides and talk around them, and how exploring and re-versioning concepts across activities, brings new dimensions to the knowledge-construction process. Furthermore, the importance of addressing meaning making as an interactional achievement became evident, through extension of Baldry and Thibault’s (2006) ‘meaning-making trajectory’. Analysing teacher and pupil perspectives offers valuable insights, regarding how the teacher used and improvised from his lesson plan to acknowledge pupils’ interpretations, and support ongoing meaning making. These contributions represent important understandings of knowledge construction in contemporary, technology-mediated classrooms

Section introduction: Dialogic education and digital technology

The chapters in this section of the book focus specifically on dialogic education and digital technology. To frame this chapter, it is important to understand why there should be mutual interest among those who are interested in the role of dialogic approaches, and the role of digital technologies in learning. At weakest such shared theorising is important simply because technology is increasingly available (indeed, pervasive) in our everyday lives and classrooms. In this view, technologies are more or less neutral actors to be leveraged as we wish; we should thus understand how to develop dialogic approaches in this emerging context. However, while of course rapid technological change creates an imperative to understand the impact of that change, this narrow perspective is a view that sociocultural researchers and those interested in dialogic approaches would reject. A somewhat stronger claim, then, and one that is made explicitly by Major and Warwick (this section) is that those who are interested in dialogic approaches to learning should be interested in digital technologies with respect to the affordances or possibilities for action that those technologies create for dialogue. A corollary, then, is that those interested in digital technologies should be interested in how they might develop and research tools that create or embody such affordances for dialogue and learning. Within this context, digital tools can be seen as affording opportunity to, for example, make learning visible to students and teachers as an artefact for reflection and improvement, creating sharing space to scrutinise ideas, and showing how ideas evolve over time. Moreover, as Major and Warwick note, we care not only about the action possibilities, but also the enacted affordances for dialogue – i.e., the specific ways in which the action possibilities are implicated in promotion of dialogic interaction for learning, and indeed, as Rasmussen et al note, the ways that new tools provide both new affordances (or possibilities) and obstacles. However, a stronger claim again is that we should be interested in the relationships between dialogic approaches to learning, and digital technologies for learning, because dialogue is both shaped by digital technologies, and helps to shape both the use and emergence of those technologies. That is, to use the language of Major and Warwick, in addition to technology creating affordances for dialogue, dialogue also creates affordances for particular uses of technology; the two are thus in mutually constitutive interaction. Put another way, Kumpulainen, Rajala, and Kajamaa (this section) distinguish material-dialogic spaces in which the focus is (1) about artefacts of digital technologies – i.e., dialogue centred on digital technology; (2) around digital technologies – i.e., dialogue that is in the context of these technologies, a context which is expanded by the very use of those digital technologies, through their affordances for dialogue; and (3) with or through digital technologies, which might be characterised in terms of meaning that is mutually constituted in and through the dialogue and materiality of the digital technologies. Each of these perspectives can be seen in the chapters in this section of the handbook, each with important implications for how we understand and foster dialogue approaches, and digital technologies, for learning

Discourse, computation and context – sociocultural DCLA revisited

This paper expands the sociocultural analysis of earlier discourse centric learning analytics (DCLA) to discuss the pedagogic functions of discourse, and the implications of these functions for DCLA. Given the importance of discourse for learning [13], and the potential of computers to (a) scaffold effective discourse and (b) give meaningful feedback on such discourse, it is important that DCLA are well theorised. Sociocultural theory emphasises context, and discourse “in action” in its analysis. If DCLA wishes to ground itself in such theory, work will need to be done to address these aspects of discourse in computational analysis. Given the potential of DCLA to provide support for educational talk – an important aspect of learning – research should be conducted to further develop DCLA approaches to such talk

Discourse-centric learning analytics: mapping the terrain

There is an increasing interest in developing learning analytic techniques for the analysis, and support of, high quality learning discourse. This paper maps the terrain of discourse-centric learning analytics (DCLA), outlining the distinctive contribution of DCLA and outlining a definition for the field moving forwards. It is our claim that DCLA provide the opportunity to explore the ways in which: discourse of various forms both resources and evidences learning; the ways in which small and large groups, and individuals make and share meaning together through their language use; and the particular types of language – from discipline specific, to argumentative and socio-emotional – associated with positive learning outcomes. DCLA is thus not merely a computational aid to help detect or evidence ‘good’ and ‘bad’ performance (the focus of many kinds of analytic), but a tool to help investigate questions of interest to researchers, practitioners, and ultimately learners. The paper ends with three core issues for DCLA researchers – the challenge of context in relation to DCLA; the various systems required for DCLA to be effective; and the means through which DCLA might be delivered for maximum impact at the micro (e.g. learner), meso (e.g. school), and macro (e.g. governmental) levels

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